HELLRAISER

Frank (Sean Chapman), a man without scruples in continuous search of new and perverse sexual practices, buys in a bazaar of an unidentified third-world country, the Lament Configuration, a cubic puzzle that, according to legend, would grant the desire to experience the pleasures of the flesh beyond the limits of human knowledge. The man returns to his home in England and solves the puzzle, thirsty for the prospect of being able to experience new sexual experiences: but from it emerge the Cenobites or "sufferers," ruthless demons from a parallel infernal dimension led by the sinister Pinhead. Frank discovers at his expense that pleasure, beyond the threshold of terrestrial endurance, becomes pure and piercing psychophysical pain. Thus, he ends up skinned alive and his soul is imprisoned in the cenobite existential plane and condemned to an eternity of "delicious" tortures. Years later, Larry (Andrew Robinson), an affectionate and exemplary husband, moves into the house of his disappeared brother along with his daughter Kirsty and his second wife Julia (who had often secretly cheated on him with Frank and had become a slave to his intense sadomasochistic practices). One night, some drops of Larry's blood, who had accidentally cut his hand, bring back to life the soul of the disappeared relative who materializes in the form of a skeleton with internal organs and some muscles. To reform completely and definitively escape the tortures of the sufferers, Frank still needs blood. He decides to use the perverse and submissive Julia who ends up, after a series of victims chosen at random in bars, offering him the same naive brother as prey. And so Frank fully reincarnates using as an "outer shell" the skin of the poor Larry. His attentions then turn towards the young niece. But, fortunately for her, Kirsty discovers the mystery of the cubic puzzle and decides to use the sufferers and the charismatic Pinhead to avenge the murder of her beloved father... Will she succeed? The film written and directed by Clive Barker, despite its very low budget, transports to the screen in an incisive way the claustrophobic atmospheres of the story (for more information see the article "Everything about Hellraiser" in the "Specials" section). The enormous success found in theaters will create a film genre and a series of gadgets and comics related to the cenobite universe of the sufferers. Preferably watch in the uncut version, which adds more pathos and new splatter scenes.